Dr. Don WoodResolving Your Trauma-Based Challenges So You Can Unlock Peak Performance

The First Step to Stopping Your Depression

10 Mar 2025 · 1 min

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1:03

A short video by Dr. Don Wood explaining that depression is a brain function signaling unresolved emotional events. He argues depression arises when the mind's anger (prompting action) toward past mistreatment—such as childhood criticism—was not acted upon, causing the mind to enter a depressed state; the first step to overcoming depression is recognizing it as a call for resolution.

Chapters

If you have deep depression and it's holding you back from enjoying your life, this is the first step in beating it. Depression is actually a function of the brain. Now, that sounds very different than what you've probably heard. What I mean by a function of the brain is your mind is not okay with something that has happened in your life. Let's just say we had a child growing up in a home, and they were constantly berated and constantly criticized. So now they're an adult, and they think back to what happened to them as a child, and they start getting angry. Why did my parent treat me like that? Why did they make me feel so bad? And then your mind starts to get angry, and what it's trying to get you to do is stand up for yourself, do something about it. And then when you didn't answer the anger call, it went into a depressed state. So the key in beating depression is to first understand what it is. It's a call for a resolution. And you didn't answer the call. Your mind kept looking at that event or those events over and over and over, and it used an emotion to get you into an action.